Hi there! One of the C# language designers here, working on unions. All the different options have tradeoffs. As an example, the non-boxing options tear, which can be problematic. And, we have a lot of experience implementing the simple, reference-type, approach for types that make a lot of sense to people, but then adding a lightweight, value-type version for people who care about that later. See tuples, as well as records.

I expect the same will old here. But given the former group is multiple orders of magnitude higher than the latter, we tend to design the language in that order accordingly.

Trust me, we're very intersted in the low-overhead space as well. But it will be for more advanced users that can accept the tradeoffs involved.

And, in the meantime, we're designing it in C#15 that you can always roll the perfect implementation for your use case, and still be thought of as a union from teh language.